


a roar surrounds me

by orca_mandaeru



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Gladiators, Angst and Tragedy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Violence, Dark, Dark Lee Taeyong, Disassociation, Eye Gouging, Future Nakamoto Yuta/Lee Taeyong - Freeform, Gen, M/M, Malnourishment, Mental Health Issues, No Smut, Past Lee Taeyong/Seo Youngho | Johnny - Freeform, Pre-Relationship, Slavery, Trauma, jail break, pit fights, taeyong has had a terrible life and is thus kind of a dick to mark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-25 21:04:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21362674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orca_mandaeru/pseuds/orca_mandaeru
Summary: Lee Taeyong has never known anything but pain, blood, dust, and the deafening cheers of a merciless audience.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Nakamoto Yuta, Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 7
Kudos: 71





	a roar surrounds me

**Author's Note:**

> so i'm finally releasing my baby out in the wild!! this is unfinished, and would have been around 150k if i had written it all. there's a good chance i'll never finish it, but who knows... i just wanted to put what i have out there since i love it so much. also this is the most nervous i've ever been about posting a fic before i hope it's not obvious that i never write anything but smut...
> 
> PLEASE tell me if i've missed any tags/warnings!! things are really shitty in the beginning, but just know that after this section ends things got a lot better over time.

A voice is calling his name somewhere. The sound seems distant, but there’s no such thing as accurate perception in this haze. Unfortunately, even floating here in a brief respite from awareness, wavering in and out of indecipherable smells and the ever-present heat everywhere, there’s still a brain stuck in his skull. It yells insistently that that distant voice is important, that he needs to get up. 

Taeyong mutters under his breath and shakes his head to free his mind of the annoying buzz. It doesn’t work, just gets sharper, and he smacks himself on the temple to try and dislodge it. He topples off the bench his body was perched on, catching himself on loose gravel, the stone embedding into the calloused skin of his palms. His eyes fly open, brain kicking back in gear and awareness returning to him bit by bit. 

First, the dizziness making his head feel like a whirlpool, the sting of his palms. Next, the smells, the familiar cocktail of blood, rot, sweat, and misery. The sour copper tang of it all hitting his tongue. Taeyong’s too used to it to be bothered. And finally, the Master calling his name, once, twice, insistent now. Soon enough he’ll barge in to come in and drag Taeyong out himself, and then there’ll be no food for a few days to teach him a lesson. 

He could easily overpower the Master, a small, weaselly man who thought himself to be much stronger than in actuality. Taeyong doesn’t know his real name. If he learned it he would make himself forget it. Taeyong could rip his throat out with his fingers easy as anything, like he has done to others a thousand times, but he knows he won’t. Taeyong makes the Arena good money, but not enough to cover the Master’s pettiness. And that makes him even more infuriating. 

Taeyong’s survival instincts are the only thing left about him. Like the animal he is, he’ll claw and fight desperately to hang onto that bare semblance of an existence he has. He often wishes he didn’t have that annoying cling to life. It would be easier, overall. 

But no, he still hauls himself up off the ground. The gravel embedded in his palms pierces the skin when wraps it around the cell door handle, turning it and finding it unlocked like it only is before a fight. The scent of blood hits his nostrils and he breaths it in eagerly, hungry for more. The Master is already huffing his way down the hallway, whining “Finally,” and grabbing Taeyong’s arm. 

Taeyong snaps his teeth at him and the man jumps back, a bit of fear on his stupid smug face. Taeyong laughs under his breath and the Master collects himself and shakes Taeyong roughly like a dog with a chew toy. “Listen here, scum. You try anything and you won’t be seeing any food for a week. Go out there and fight, that’s all your worth for anyway, you understand?” 

Taeyong lets his body go limp and any sort of recognition leave his eyes, threatening to drop back into unawareness. The Master scoffs and shoves him forward. Taeyong stumbles before regaining his balance and walking on autopilot, not sparing a glance to the cells on either sides of the hallway, the occasional jeer as he passes by. 

He often hears one of his neighbors muttering to themselves, the occasional scream of despair of a new inmate. They’ve annoying. Taeyong takes satisfaction in the knowledge that all of them will die, probably sooner rather than later. He’s the only one who’s lasted here for longer than a few years.

As he nears the exit, more and more light filters through, abrasive to his eyes. There’s only enough light in his cell to barely see, nothing compared to the shock of natural sunlight that is the open world. But his eyes will get used to it, they always have. They’re in view of the opening now, directly opening out from the stone hallway, the bright open light, flashes of the Arena visible. Taeyong can hear them already, the deafening cheers of bloodthirsty citizens. 

The Master shoves him forward again, directly into the sunlight, before disappearing back into the shadows like the leech he is. Taeyong entertains the thought of dragging the Master to the Hectagon with him, giving the people a real show. Instead, he stands straight and tall, the way he’s forcing his eyes open to get used to the sunlight quicker making him look manic and wide-eyed. 

The Arena is enormous. The circular field surrounded by the stands has two stone pathways leading to opposite doorways, and in the middle, the Hectagon. The rest of the area is filled with sand, for the preliminary activities. The sand can also be drained and replaced with water for aquatic shows, but they’re out of style at the moment. Plenty of shows come in and out of style, but the one thing that never fails to draw a crowd, that will always be chic, are the fights. 

Surrounding the field are the stands, the rows and rows of carved seats rising taller and taller until they touch the sky, every viewer with an equal view of the action. The way the arena is built the sound echoes to every corner of the stands, giving every patron an upclose soundtrack of the carnage below.

Taeyong knows he doesn't cut an intimidating figure. He’s wearing dirty tattered rags too big for him, hanging off his thin limbs. They also hide the tightly corded muscles wrapping his frame, the way his posture is hunched from experience instead of nerves. His face looks nothing like the rest of the fighters, could be called pretty even with the constant bruising and broken noses, none of the regular craggy, rough features. He looks weak. 

Newcomers, no matter what their friends tell them, will always bet against him. Of course, it’s in his favor in the end, coin from the falsely confident bets securing Taeyong’s place. He walks the length of the stone path, head held high, proud no matter what he is. There’s thousands of eyes on him, appraising him. 

Taeyong reaches the Hectagon, calmly stepping over the corded rope marking out the border. As he settles into a standing position, staring at the dusty ground and not bothering to look at his surroundings. This has happened too often for that. And there’s nothing interesting about the spectators, there never was. The only thing that used to be interesting was the Royal Box, the shaded and heavily guarded figure of the Emperor staring down at everyone at a height that makes everything look like ants. It’s not the fight the Emperor wants to watch, it’s the reaffirmation of his ultimate supremacy.

The cheers of the stadium roar loud, and Taeyong looks up from the dust to see his opponent emerging from the other entrance. Even this far away, he can tell the man is enormous, head seeming to brush the sky and torso just as wide, shirtless to show off his bulging muscles. He strides confidently towards the Hectagon, flexing his muscles and turning in circles to show off to the cheering audience, letting out a triumphant roar. 

Taeyong returns his gaze back to the ground. There’s no need to watch any longer, he knows what kind of opponent this man will be. From the build of him and the clean shave of his dark beard, he’s probably not a slave. More likely a soldier, who could beat all his peers in wrestling and is now thinking to establish his position by killing a trapped slave in the fighting pits. He’ll be easy, these always are. 

Johnny would tell him to never underestimate an opponent. 

Taeyong shakes his head, frowning. He thought he got rid of pesky memories of things he shouldn’t be thinking about. It’s a comfortable existence to know nothing but red dust, red anger and red blood.

His opponent’s heavy footsteps thud closer. Taeyong raises his eyes up, up to his opponent’s, which are filled with cruel amusement. He’s looking down at Taeyong and seeing a skinny, underfed, short boy, and is laughing. Taeyong doesn’t care enough to feel offended. The Announcer’s voice rings throughout the stadium, low voice booming the introduction. He tunes out all of it, ears pricked only for that fateful word. “Fight!”

Just as Taeyong expected, his opponent lunges forward, clearly expecting to get a hold on Taeyong and snap his neck quick. His hands miss him by a foot, Taeyong already ducked over to the other side of the rink. His face when he spots him is comical. He’s probably used to opponents who would stand and fight him, “fairly.” But nothing about this is fair, and Taeyong is fighting for his life, not for bragging rights. 

He dives to the ground, catching hold of one of the opponent’s legs and kicking the other one out. The mighty fall the hardest, and this large man hits the dust like a great tree felled with an alarmed shout. Damn, this is so easy. Taeyong wedges himself around his opponent's neck, getting a good grip on the soft skin under his chin. His assailant scrabbles at Taeyong’s hands but he’s at a good angle where the opponent can’t get purchase. Taeyong’s untrimmed nails dig into the thin skin, breaking the surface and liquid welling up. The faint smell of blood hits the air and Taeyong’s mouth starts to water.

The fights don’t have to be to death as long as they’re entertaining and there’s enough blood shed. Taeyong doesn’t have the patience anymore to draw this out, a death will make up for that. The dust swirls up from the ground, choking his lungs and making his eyes burn. The anger burns hot crimson, at those fucking cheers, at the Emperor watching his toys from above, at this cocky stranger. 

His brain checks out into red fog and his fingers dig deeper until flesh squishes and his fingers are wet. He breathes in the now-heavy smell of blood, relishing the opponent twitching and spasming between his limbs, trying to get away. Taeyong’s on his back, his legs trapping the man in a headlock. He digs in and rips. The gurgling noise the man under him makes is so satisfying, the pressure increasing until gore starts to splattering across Taeyong’s face. 

His hands fly, tearing indiscriminately until his fingers hit bone. The man goes limp, the life draining from him. Taeyong slows down and then stops, breathing hard. The whole arena has quieted down. He unwinds himself, stands up on legs shaky with adrenaline. The burly man is limp and not just dead on the ground but destroyed, neck area a pulpy mess, the dusty ground saturated with red. The Arena bursts into noise, and the Announcer relays the winner. 

Taeyong stares down at the blood on his hands and feels numb again.

He walks on autopilot back to his gate, the Master walking behind him and rattling on about the profit, a few scolding words about ending things too quickly. As always after a fight, they keep going past the cells, to a small open room with a simple large wooden tub. The Master pushes Taeyong into the room and closes the door, and he’s alone again. Suddenly the blood on Taeyong’s body is unbearable, death clinging to him like it always does, to his every step. 

He strips off his rags and steps into the tub, plunging his hands into the cold water. The icy temperature sends shivers up his spine, but sensation always has a problem getting to Taeyong. His memory is fucked up too. He can’t remember much, only the haze that permeates his brain at all time. He learned long ago, if he ever let himself feel anything but nothing, he would be torn apart from the seams. Better to be nothing but an animal with a singular purpose, to survive.

Taeyong just soaks in the water, limbs curled into him and surrounded by pink water. The tips of his fingers hurt now, aching down to his bones in a way that settles on his skin. it’s almost welcome, the bit of sensation. He always feels numb, but surrounded by water like this, the numbness is almost comforting in a way. Falling into the dusty fog he does in his cell stops him from thinking, but it doesn’t make him feel anything like this little bit of calm.

And of course, like any tiny scrap of peace he gets, it’s interrupted by the door banging open. Taeyong stands up, water streaming off him. The Master strides in and tosses a slightly cleaner set of rags in his direction. Taeyong uses the dirty ones to dry himself off as much as he can, uncaring of the dirt it rubs into his skin. He’s never anything close to truly clean, anyway. 

Back to the cell it is. When Taeyong stumbles back into his room, he expects to see the familiar dirty stone walls, wooden bench and pile of rags that serves as a bed. The same place that he’s been living in for who knows how many years. But that’s not all he sees. Instead there’s a boy in there, in Taeyong’s own cell, sitting on the wood bench wearing clothes the likes of which Taeyong’s only seen on the members in the audience in the Arena. 

“What.” Taeyong says. His voice is gravely with unuse. He hasn’t spoken out loud in a very long time, and it sounds foreign to his ears. Taeyong whirls around but the door has already slammed shut, the handle jamming locked under his hands. He drops to the ground, looking through the little slot they shove food through. “Get him out!” Taeyong yells into the hallway, coughing as his voice grates. No answer, no sound of footsteps. 

“Trouble, pretty boy?” one of the other cell inhabitants calls.

Taeyong growls and stands up, turning to the boy in his cell. Taeyong’s a bad judge of age, but this guy is tall enough to be his age but has a soft, round face, wide eyes filled with fear. Taeyong holds himself warily, ready to move either to attack or get away, studying this new person. He truly looks like he was plucked out of that hated audience. 

He’s obviously never fought a day in his life, never been beaten an inch from death and still clinging to it. All his visible skin is unmarked and there’s meat on his figure, polar opposite to Taeyong’s whip-lean scarred body. 

Taeyong stalks forward, relishing the naked fear on this imposter’s face. “What are you doing here.” Taeyong rasps, and the prompting starts a flood of words from the boy. 

“Please don’t hurt me, I don’t know what happened! I woke up in this truck and then this dude looked at me and threw me in here, please don’t kill me!”

Taeyong scoffs. Fear has no place here. This soft boy is going to be thrown into the Hectagon, probably try to run or worse, and get beaten to a pulp. Taeyong doesn’t remember when he first came here, and he doesn’t want to. This is his life, his reality, and that’s all he needs to think about, if he needs to think at all. 

The boy is huddling into the corner of the wall, big eyes darting around the cell, always returning back to watch taeyong. Taeyong ignores him, stalking over to the pile of old blankets and sitting down, cross-legged, ready to fall back into that red fog. “Um, what’s your name?” the kid asks. He’s obviously still terrified, voice wavering, but his gaze is more curious than scared when Taeyong looks up at him. Taeyong flatly stares at him and this time, the other doesn’t break eye contact. “I’m Mark.” 

Taeyong sighs and tells him. He expects that to be it, to just fall into a slightly altered routine and leave each other alone. That’s what he wants to happen, anyway. But no, Mark breathes in sharp. “Wait,  _ the _ Taeyong? The prince?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Taeyong says, irritated. He doesn’t know anyone, besides the Master and the Emperor. Mark’s mouth is slightly open, staring at Taeyong, and he shifts uncomfortably. This is too much, having another person so close. 

“No, it wasn’t supposed to be like this...” Mark mutters to himself. 

“Shut up,” Taeyong snaps. “You’ll be dead soon, you know. You’ll get destroyed.” It’s true, Mark doesn’t stand a chance, but the way the kid’s face crumples makes him uncomfortable. He hasn’t felt anything but emptiness and rage in a long, long time. He puts his head down between his knees and lets himself blank out, emptying his mind of pesky awareness.

Sure enough, after a full day of Taeyong pointedly ignoring his new cellmate, the Master returns. This time it’s Mark’s wrist he’s grabbing, smiling coldly. Mark tries to struggle but he’s weak, and 

the Master yanks impatiently. Taeyong watches impassively as Mark meets his eyes pleadingly. 

What does he expect Taeyong to do? 

The door swings shut again and Taeyong puts his head down and drifts off to sleep. When he wakes up he’ll be alone again, probably.

He’s not alone when he wakes up. In fact, there’s Mark, sitting on the bench like he was when Taeyong first saw him. However, this isn’t at all the Mark of that time. His eyes aren’t just wide now, but like they’ve been pinned open, hollow gaze staring at the stone floor and entire figure shaking. Taeyong uncurls and waves a hand in front of the boy’s eyes. Mark doesn’t respond, doesn’t look at him. Taeyong wants to shrug it off, but his routine has already been irrevocably changed, so fuck it. “Mark?” he asks. 

Mark keeps staring at the ground. A long moment passes, and Taeyong’s about to go back to sleep when he hears the voice. “I killed him.” It’s quiet, strained and choked with emotion.

Taeyong looks over at him, but Mark’s eyes don’t move from their place glued to the floor. He’s clean of blood, so he must have gone to the baths, and there’s bruises already blooming in the shapes of fingertips around his neck. He takes a shaky breath in and continues. “I didn’t want to. I told myself I wouldn’t. But his hands were around my neck, and I just...” His voice breaks.

Taeyong watches Mark, the tears starting to well and dripping down his cheeks. It makes Taeyong feel a tiny bit of something. He can’t identify it, but anything at all is much more than usual. Taeyong hasn’t seen someone cry since… since something he will not let himself try and remember. Mark looks up, wavering eyes meeting his. “Did it feel like this for you, when you first killed? Like you’ve been scraped out from the inside?” 

It’s been oh so long since Taeyong’s first kill. If he tries he can regain scraps of memory, his small frame screaming and battering against the walls, trying to escape, getting dragged away all the way to the Arena and being thrown in to the soundtrack of jeering laughter of the Audience all around him. His faceless attacker, because Taeyong had been too short then to see his face, laughing like everyone else and taunting the terrified teenager. 

When he had gotten bored of that he had toyed with Taeyong, trapped him to the ground and kneed him in the gut once, twice, only enough to leave him gasping for breath and curled over in pain. Taeyong had cried then. Had Mark cried? 

The attacker had gotten bored of that, too, when Taeyong went limp and helpless. He had been strong enough to lift Taeyong fully over his head to slam his skull on the packed ground. It’s all coming back to him clearly, too clearly, the way time stopped and young Taeyong had the realization that he was about to die. 

Something had snapped in him then, something that could never be fixed again, something that blanked out his buzzing brain until he knew nothing but the sensation of his thumbs digging into the soft squishy surface of his opponent’s eyes. The pained screams and scrabbling hands to get Taeyong off, but he clung for his life, wrapped his legs around the man’s shoulders and dug his thumbs in until the flesh gave and spurted liquid all over his hands. 

The man had fallen to the ground then, his screams neverending, and the audience stopped laughing. They started cheering instead. He doesn’t remember what happened or what he felt after that, mostly because that’s how early the numbness started to set in. there’s been only one break in the blur after that, up until now, with Mark.

Mark’s looked back away by now, probably expecting Taeyong to keep ignoring him. “I don’t remember.” Taeyong lies. “It was a long time ago.”

Mark wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, looking at Taeyong curiously. “Have you really been here since you got taken?”

“Taken?” Taeyong asks blankly.

Mark stares at him. “Everyone knows the story. The young prince, cruelly stolen away in the night by the usurpers while they… you don’t know any of this, do you.”

Taeyong shifts, annoyed with the way Mark is looking at him. Not pity, but something close to it. Maybe Taeyong should rip the expression off his face. “I don’t remember anything from before.”

Mark shakes his head. “There’s… this is all so fucked up. You don’t remember your parents? The palace?”

Taeyong cocks his head to the side and wrinkles his nose. How have they come to these stupid questions so fast? Mark was crying just a few minutes ago. He’s weak, Taeyong has the power here. “I’m going to sleep,” Taeyong says shortly, turning his back to Mark and squeezing his eyes shut. He’d never turn his back on an opponent in the ring, but this isn’t the Hectagon. Mark is weak, and he should know that taeyong knows that. 

_ You already underestimated him once, and he survived, _ a voice whispers in his mind. Taeyong clenches his jaw and expels the thoughts from his head. He’s not used to this, he’s not used to not being able to stop thinking, what is going on with him?

Unfortunately, Mark is still there when Taeyong wakes up, so not a bad dream. He’s just gazing blankly out the barred window. His eyes turn to Taeyong when he sits up, the hint of growing dark circles under his eyes. He already looks different than he did when Taeyong first saw him. His hair is a mess, and he’s wearing rags instead of the fancy expensive stuff he was wearing in the beginning. 

But it’s not just his outward appearance. There’s something emptier in his gaze now, a wry twist of his lips that seems more in place in this cell than the earlier fear. 

Taeyong stretches out his limbs, one at a time. He can feel Mark’s eyes on him, a too common occurrence now. “Is this all you do? Sleep and sit around?”

Taeyong breathes in through his nose and ignores him.

“Wow. you’ve seriously lost hope, haven’t you? Not even going to try and escape this place?”

Taeyong turns his glare to Mark, relishes the regret in his eyes before he snaps. “And what the fuck should I be doing, Mark? I spent four years trying to get out of this hellhole. There is no way out, believe me, I know. Hope? There’s no such thing. You have hope and you get killed.”

Mark’s bottom lip starts to wobble and Taeyong scoffs. “Gonna cry again, Mark? Face it, you’re stuck here until you get killed.”

There’s tears running down Mark’s face but his voice is steady when he speaks. “You’re wrong, Taeyong. You’re wrong, and I’m going to show you, I’m going to get out of here.”

Taeyong doesn’t look at him again, feeling slightly nauseous. He wonders if he was this idealistic his first few days, and how long it took to beat it out of him. 

**

Mark just won’t shut up. He learned quick that he couldn’t get a response from Taeyong, but that didn’t stop him from talking into thin air. It’s bad. Taeyong doesn’t want to show that he’s affected by it, but Mark jumped right into describing his outside home, voice soft in the silent cell. “The woods are so beautiful behind the mansion. I remember how me and Donghyuck used to explore them as kids. We’d always find our way back and Minseo would give us lemonade...” 

Taeyong covers his ears with his hands, but it doesn’t block anything out. The words pull unwillingly a memory from the depths of his mind, a cool touch of glass against his lips, a gentle hand on his head. Mark continues, voice growing fond. “We still go there sometimes, when things get stressful. That’s been happening a lot lately, but it’s worth it.”

“Shut up.” Taeyong says, voice muffled by his arms. 

Mark ignores him. “The gardens are my favorite place, though. They’re a bit overgrown, but there’s a pretty fountain in the middle. It’s covered in ivy, and the birds-”

Taeyong shakes his head and stands up, covers the bare few steps and before he knows it, he’s got his hands around Mark’s neck. The fear shining in his eyes isn’t as satisfying as he wanted. Taeyong stares down at his face, hearing the slight choking noises. He’s not looking at Mark’s face anymore, but an older face with that familiar smile on his face. The cell washes away from his sight, turning into the dust of the arena, cheers surrounding him and a heartbreakingly familiar voice whispering _ “It’s alright, Taeyong, I forgive you.” _

Taeyong gasps and staggers back. He squeezes his eyes shut, only seeing his own hands on the only person he’s ever let in’s neck. “Taeyong?” he barely registers the tentative hand shaking his shoulder. He blinks his eyes open to meet Mark’s wide eyes, the deafening cheers ringing in his head dissipating into silence. “Are you okay?” 

Why is Mark asking? Taeyong just fucking tried to strangle him, and in the same place his ropponent had yesterday. He should leave Taeyong to die. “I’m fine.” he says, voice rough. 

“You’re not.” Mark says, eyes pitying again. Taeyong pushes himself up. He opens his mouth to respond, but there’s a noise and the door bursts open.

The Master’s face zeroes in on the vulnerable expression on Taeyong’s face, a cruel smile spreading across his face. “You’re up.” Mark shrinks back under the Master’s gaze, and Taeyong pauses for a second, caught off guard. The Master hums impatiently and Taeyong jolts into action, following the man out into the hallway, casting one last glance to Mark’s wide eyes before the door slams shut behind him.

It’s all the same routine, the walk through the dingy hallway and out onto the dirt. But the moment he sees those cheering audience faces, Taeyong knows everything’s wrong. Nothing on the outside has changed, but he’s changed, a nut caught in the gears of his routine making everything crash and burn. He can’t reach that unfeeling numbness he had gotten so good at achieving. Instead, he acutely feels the heat beating down on his head, the jarring noise of hundreds of people, the sunlight stinging his eyes.

His opponent comes out, a wiry, strong looking man wearing simple clothes. Taeyong steps forward and takes a slow breath in, making a last attempt at collecting himself.

It goes to shit. 

This is the first time Taeyong’s struggled in a long time. The entire time he’s too aware, can’t get lost in it, mind racing and slow compared to his usual muscle memory. And the man he’s fighting is good, uncommonly, obviously trained and determined. Not cocky like many of his opponents, but quiet and focused. Taeyong slips up multiple times, and by the time he slams the man’s skull into the ground he’s trembling, blood running down his forehead and entire body aching with the promise of bruises. 

The familiar cheers roar around him, and Taeyong stares down at the body in front of his face, the blood pooling around his feet, and bile starts to rise up his throat. The heat, the haze of sweat and dirt, makes a shimmering mirage in the air. The body is barely recognizable now, it could easily be anyone.

He shakes his head, trying to collect the drifting pieces of his mind. He keeps trying, eyes locked on a point in the distance but not seeing anything, all the way until the cell door closes behind him again. Taeyong blinks and looks down at himself. He doesn’t remember going to the baths and cleaning off, doesn’t remember walking the halls. He looks up and meets Mark’s wide, concerned eyes.

Mark stands up, rests his hands on Taeyong’s shoulders. His first instinct at the touch is to yank the hands away, but his limbs are so weak from the near-hour of struggling for his life. Taeyong grasps at the boy and stumbles forward, legs losing strength. “Y-you okay?” Mark says, voice shaky. He supports Taeyong’s body, walking backwards until he can sit down on the bench. 

Taeyong’s whole body shakes, dry sobs wracked from his throat as a cracked dam of emotions hit him. Now who’s the weak one? He barely recognizes the feeling of water streaming down his face, taste salty on his lips. He curls his hands into the back of Mark’s shift and sobs, a persistently sharp splinter lodged in his heart. This is all Mark’s fault. He was doing fine until someone rocked the boat, he could have gone on blissfully feeling nothing until he was finally killed. Mark’s hand tentatively pats his shaking shoulders. “It’s okay to cry, Taeyong.” 

“No, it’s not,” he bites out, but his watery voice has less of an effect. “It’s not, it’s not, it’s  _ not _ .” Mark stays silent, lightly squeezing taeyong closer. Taeyong hasn’t been touched in a friendly way in years. He shouldn’t let himself indulge in fleeting tastes of things he can’t have, but he just stays there, sniffling. 

There’s a noise at the opposite side of the cell, and Mark turns to look, commenting under his breath something too quiet to hear. Mark shifts slightly, and Taeyong climbs off of him and curls up on the bench, wrapping his arms around his knees and pressing his face into his hands. “Look.” Taeyong does so and Mark is leaning down to the window, pointing.

His view is a little blurry, but he can still make out the dark shape perched on the stone sill, wings flapping to steady itself. Instead of shooing the bird away, Mark speaks softly to it. “Hey there. You got something for me?” The bird squawks and holds out a foot, something white wrapped around it. Mark reaches out an unfastens the thing from around the scaly talon. He sticks his finger through the window bars and stokes lightly over the bird’s glossy feathers, whispering “Thank you.” 

He looks down at the little capsule in his palm, cracking the clear pill open and unrolling the scrap of paper inside. As he brings it close to his eyes and reads, his hand comes up to cover his mouth. Taeyong watches warily, furiously wiping his face of the remnants of tears. Mark raises his eyes to meet Taeyong’s, something bright shining there. He walks over and sits down next to Taeyong, silent for a moment. 

He bites his lip and looks down at the paper in his hand. “Read it,” he says, holding it out to Taeyong. Taeyong grasps it and squints at the tiny writing. He can’t remember being taught to read, but he does recognize the characters.  _ Hold tight, help coming soon _ , is all that is on the little paper. Taeyong looks up at Mark, confused. “Where did this come from? Who was it meant for?” 

Mark takes the paper back, but holds onto Taeyong’s hand. He wants to pull back, he’s already made a mistake by letting himself be seen so vulnerable, but Mark’s earnest eyes hold him in place. “Taeyong, don’t you see? My friends are going to get us out of here! Out, free!” 

Taeyong stills, murmuring a small “What?” There’s no such thing as escape. There’s no such thing as the outside world. Those were things that were absolutely unimaginable, not even close to a possibility. 

Mark continues. “I didn’t want to bring it up earlier in case it fell through, but. They’re so smart, we’ll be out of here before you know it.” Taeyong stares at the wall. Could it really be this easy? After the first few years, he had totally resigned himself to just living as long as possible in here before being killed. There’s nothing else for him, he’s been here his whole life. He doesn’t know anything else, not like how Mark has memories of gardens and friends. 

Taeyong swallows hard and takes a shaky breath. “Tell me about them.” 

Mark jolts and looks up at him. “What?” 

“Tell me about your friends. The ones getting us out.” 

Surprised, Mark smiles softly.

“You really want to know? Well, there’s Jaehyun, who helps with the military and undercover connections. And Doyoung, who takes care of the finances. And then there’s Yuta, who infiltrates places physically. He’s probably the one coming to help us.”

Taeyong nods. He kind of wants to ask what they’re like, but it’s so strange to hear about other people like that. With jobs, with lives, with connections. He needs to think about this, slowly. It’ll take time to process.

Nothing happens the next week, other than the usual meagre food pushed under the door. They only give a tiny bit more food for the two of them than Taeyong got, and that was little already. Nowhere near enough for the both of them, but it’s obviously hitting Mark harder. Taeyong’s had to live off of this for years, Mark is probably accustomed to much better fare. That’s another thing Taeyong has been thinking about recently, the first time he’s allowed that in years.

To pass the time, he starts to teach Mark how to fight. Desperation can get him through with luck on his side, but all that will be nothing up against a slightly trained fighter. It’s hard not to think about who did this for him, but it helps that Mark is so different from himself. He’s an eager learner, interested eyes taking in all that Taeyong teaches him.

He’s obviously seen or watched people fight before, his insights on strategy. But those are all with weapons. Taeyong doesn’t know anything about that, only the type of fighting he knows is the kind where you have nothing but your wit and body.

They’re panting and recovering from one of these training sessions when there’s a squawk by the window. It’s the same black bird as before, intelligent, beady eyes staring. Taeyong walks over to the window this time, peering curiously at it. The window is set in the side of a cliff, stone falling all the way down to a dense forest below. The lax security of the place is made up for the fact that the only ways out are all the way through the hallways and living chambers, or out the window to fall to their death.

The black bird looks up at Taeyong, sticking its scaly leg out. There’s a little piece of twine there, and dangling from it, a long, thick piece of metal. Taeyong unties the twine with nimble fingers, holding the metal up to the light to show Mark, who’s come to stand behind him. “It’s a chisel. They probably mean for us to saw through the bars.”

Taeyong looks between the metal and the window. The raven looks at him again, and he doesn’t know if it’s imagination or not, it looks pointed with intent. The window is small, but without the bars it’s large enough to squeeze through. Taeyong and Mark are both skinny enough, anyways. There’s two bars, both thick and rusted with old age.

They look at each other, and then Taeyong shrugs and turns the metal around in his fingers, stepping up to the window. Mark peers close as Taeyong fits it against one bar, experimentally pressing. The metal sinks a tiny bit into the bar, but not as much as he was hoping. Taeyong saws it back and forth and it bites a tiny bit more into it every time. It works, but it’ll take hours and hours to saw through the top and bottom of every bar. Do they have the time? The door doesn’t open except for when the Master comes in to take one of them for a fight.

Mark rests his hand on Taeyong’s shoulder. The touch is still strange, but more comfortable. “We’ll take turns.” 

Taeyong nods and resolutely grips the chisel, going at the bar hard. He bites his lip and thinks. “Where do the birds come from?”

Mark perks up. “Oh, Taeil trains them! It’s really cool, sometimes I think he can talk to birds. He can get them to do whatever he wants.” Taeyong pauses at that. He can almost remember something, scraps of a memory from those times before the arena. Not much, just an image of a bird’s golden eyes looking into his.

He prompts Mark to go on, readjusting his grip on the chisel. Mark keeps talking, about the hawks used for hunting, the ravens used for communication, the way they all are friendly but dangerous. Taeyong listens because it’s all he can do. It would be a futile effort to not get his hopes up, since they’re already up all the way, so he listens and chisels away, imagining open fields and the presence of animals. 

He listens until his hands start to ache and cramp with all the pressure, wincing as he pulls them and the chisel away. He’s worked his way through about a third of the bottom part of one of the bars, but there’s a long way to go. There are shiny little metal filings in a dust around his hands, and he brushes them off on his pants and hands the chisel to Mark.

He takes his place, and this time a silence falls over them.

The work is long and tiring, exquisitely mind-numbing. It requires concentration, but not so much to be entertaining, which is agonizing. It’s no time at all before Taeyong’s hands are a mass of red pain, swollen and bruised. They’ve taken to wrapping some rags around their hands to help with the abrasion. They can’t afford to stop, every minute is precious. At least they’ve already gotten through the bottoms of both the bars, the light outside the window leaving and urgency in the air increasing.

A small choked gasp escapes Mark, and the chisel drops to the stone floor as he holds his hands close. “Let me see,” Taeyong says. Mark hold out his hands, swollen and the skin broken, blood beading through. Taeyong sighs. “We need to take a break.”

He looks around, spots the jar of precious water they get at every food break. Usually they try to conserve it as much as possible, but if this succeeds, they’ll have all the water they want. Taeyong takes one of the cleaner rags and lightly soaks it into the water before dabbing it over Mark’s wounds. He hisses in pain but keeps his palms out, cleaning away the bits of metal and drops of blood.

Mark stares down at his hands. “I really am weak, aren’t I?” Taeyong stays silent for a moment. It’s true, in all honesty. Mark’s limbs are soft, wrapped in the excess fat characteristic of a comfortable life. But… when Taeyong looks back on the memories slowly returning to him, of his first few weeks here, all he can remember is the crippling fear, how he had curled up and cried for days straight. Compared to that, Mark was bouncing back faster than he could expect.

“Yeah, physically. But you’re dealing with this pretty well.”

Mark smiles, but it’s not a happy one. “I guess.” He looks down at his bloody hands, whispers to himself. “I can do this.” Taeyong leaves him to continue on with the work.

It’s night again the next day when they finally break through the last bar. It grates out and falls to the stone floor. Mark collapses down next to it, ground down chisel and rags falling away from his bloody hands. Taeyong had told him to let him take over, Taeyong was much more used to pain, but Mark had stubbornly insisted. “Now we wait,” Mark says grimly, picking himself up again and leaning through the open window. 

Taeyong nods, peers through the now clear window. It’s dozens of feet below, green treetops carpeting the ground. They’d surely break all their bones if they tried to jump. “Wait for what?” Taeyong asks, but Mark just points. Taeyong squints and sees a black speck far away. 

“My friends are probably watching this window,” Mark says, waving his hands out the window.

As they watch, the black speck in the air gets bigger and bigger, until they can make out the beating of wings. The bird is absolutely enormous, golden beak glinting in the light and brown wings spread wide. In its claws is a large coil of rope. “Get away from the window.” Taeyong orders, backing away. The eagle slows, down, wings sending gusts of wind through the opening, powerful claws pushing the coil through the window. Taeyong grabs hold of it before it can fall, clutching the rough material tight. 

Things quiet down again and Mark reaches out tentatively, marveling at it. Taeyong still doesn’t quite believe this is real, that he might be getting out of here. He may have hope now, but he’s not going to allow himself to feel totally relieved until he’s actually out. Mark looks at him with wide eyes, a hint of wetness there. “This is it, I guess?” 

They both just sit there staring at the coil of rope. A little voice in the back of Taeyong’s head tells him that this was too easy, this is a trap. Maybe Mark was a trap, maybe nothing he’s said has been true and this is just an excuse to execute Taeyong. But at this point he’s tasted too much hope, and… fuck it. He’d rather take the chance and die then go back to his life before after getting a taste of what he could have in the outside world.

Taeyong feels exhausted down to his bones from working through the night and the constant pain, but he can rest when all this is over. He stands up, uncoiling the rope and watching it unravel. The rope is thin but made up of dozens of strands, strong and compact. He wraps the end around the stump of the window bar, knotting it again and again to make sure it holds. He looks over towards Mark, sitting still and watching him, holding his hands close to his body. Taeyong takes a deep breath in. “I’ll go first?” Mark looks at him with wide eyes, nods.

Taeyong takes the other end of the rope and throws it out the window, watches it fall all the way down until it disappears under the green canopy. This is going to hurt like a bitch. He takes a deep breath and hoists one leg up on the stone around the window, wiggling his bottom half off the precipice and grabbing hold of the rope. He carefully eases his legs down the stone wall, his bare feet finding purchase on the old cobblestone. The rope is smoother than he expected, but any contact on his bloody palms is like fire. This is going to be hell, but that’s nothing new. Taeyong very resolutely doesn’t look down or up, keeping his eyes trained on the stone wall in front of him as he slowly walks down the wall, hands wrapped around the rope one after another.

“Mark, come on!” he yells, and Mark’s head pops over the windowsill. He stays there, staring down with wide eyes. “What are you waiting for?”

“I-I don’t think I can do it! Taeyong, my hands-”

Taeyong grits his teeth and keeps down the wall. “We don’t have time for this, Mark. You’re coming or you’re not.”

Mark whimpers quietly but his legs swing out of the window. His hands grasp the rope and he cries out, slipping too fast down the rope. His feet hit Taeyong’s head before he catches himself and Taeyong breathes in slowly through the pain. He moves faster, the moss-covered stone right in front of his nose and the wind swirling through his hair. Loose bits of stone bed into the soles of his feet, and his hands are just two hot zones of pain, but they’re nearly halfway down to the ground.

Mark’s pained noises are near-constant now, but Taeyong blocks out the sensation, goes away from the pain and wind and lets autopilot take over, just moving. He’s so resolutely keeping his eyes forward in order to avoid getting dizzy that he doesn’t realize how far he’s gotten until his feet hit dirt.

His hands fly off the rope and he falls back, back hitting the ground hard. He’s so exhausted, he just wants to stay there and stare up at the waving treetops, but Mark is falling onto the ground shortly after him, collapsing against him.

A hand grabs Taeyong’s wrist and his eyes fly open, grabbing the arm and flipping the stranger’s body over his head. In a second he’s on top of the stranger with his arm pressing down on his neck. The man has bright red hair, eyes wide and surprised. He chokes for air, managing a “Wait- I’m here to help!” 

Taeyong takes his arm away reluctantly. He can hear the patter of footsteps coming close. “Yuta?” Mark says, gasping. Taeyong sits back and the stranger stands up, throwing his arms around Mark and squeezing him tight.

Taeyong looks away, vaguely uncomfortable, and his eyes catch on the nearest tree. He knows he’s seen them before, but he has no direct memories to pull from. He walks closer, runs a hand over the rough bark. He presses a palm against it and thinks he can almost feel the life thrumming through it, the power of green things. He looks behind his shoulder at the silence and Yuta is staring at him curiously.

He’s tired of stares. Taeyong ignores the stranger and walks up to Mark, his eyes widening further, almost as if he was afraid. But why wouldn’t he be? They should be scared of him. “Are we getting out of here or what?” Taeyong says tiredly.

Yuta glares at him. “Give us one second, will you?”

Taeyong sneers at him. “Oh, I’ll give you a second, a second to be dragged right back up to that godforsaken tower. Don’t think I’ll be getting you out, either. I don’t do favors.”

**Author's Note:**

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